


Switch

by SanguisetVulneraAstra



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 22:09:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1957899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SanguisetVulneraAstra/pseuds/SanguisetVulneraAstra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When it happens, the change is blatant, stark as a solar flare. Blinding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Redux

**Author's Note:**

> At the current time, I am merely typing out thoughts as they come; later on, when there is a basic substance to work with, I may go back, edit, and fill up some of the brevity to add more description and detail.

When it happens, the change is blatant, stark as a solar flare. Blinding. 

It tips Its head, watching with unveiled perplexity as Dean stalks across the room, throwing irked hands up in obvious exasperation. His voice is gruffer than usual, rippling through the air, and It watches the molecules shivering, pushed out as the tremor travels across the room to brush against the shell of Its ear. 

“Oh.”

Sam looks up, the bewildered amusement on his face melding into one of puzzlement and slight concern, brows drawing down over analytical eyes. The smile upon his lips dies away as his gaze pulls from his brother to the angel. 

“You okay, Cas?”

It nods with a halting motion, smooth chin dipping forward, bringing a flow of silken strands tumbling over its shoulders. Its gaze is focused downward, as the change is more noticeable in this vessel. The warmth that blooms is far more distracting because it is accompanied by moisture, slick and wet, that makes It shift with a shuffle of thighs together in a friction of unease. Unfamiliarity is once again distracting. 

“I am fine.” A pause, sensation expanding, pulling in –a million spans of processes as inward sight is directed to the tissue swelling in the sheath, blood flow streaming steadily downward at a fastened rate. The drowned out thrum of heart-beat becomes suddenly obvious, tugging like gravity.

“This vessel…I’m still adjusting to it.”

The sense of vulnerability is overwhelming; as if It is stripped bare, a flayed nerve trembling at the touch of oxygen. 

“Dean.” And the name is different now, hitched upon slightly lighter tones that don’t feel quite right but are fitting all the same. The Winchester turns, narrowed eyes still holding the edge of disdain, and Cas feels a flinch, the pull back, and tightens Its lips together over tight teeth. It doesn’t understand why he is so upset with It. 

“You can’t just-” More gesticulations, aggravated, stinted, annoyed. It narrows Its eyes, nonplussed. 

“Dean, I don’t understand-“

“Of course you don’t.” Dean accuses, and points a hand at It, gesturing vaguely with wrist movements and pressed together fingers. “And now you’re, you just- you can’t just up and martyr vessels, man, I mean, those were people, they aren’t just-just puppets you can shove your hand up.” 

“Dean.” Sam, now, casting his brother a look of obvious discontentment and reprove. 

“No, Sammy, don’t stand up for him.”

“But-“

“You didn’t seem to care when Jimmy was my vessel.”

Both Winchester’s turn, one with raised brows and the other with furrowed edges. 

“And, as I can recall, you didn’t care who I showed up as, so long as I answered your call.”

The boiling is back, a smouldering, and It struggles to contain the expansion, the urge to flare with indignation. The moist heat vanishes, only to be replaced by a worrisome tension in the throat, building up pressure behind Its eyes. 

“You can’t have both, Dean.”

And then It flees, streaking off through open skies in a rushed transition.

 

\- o0o -

 

“Ch- Great. What the hell was that, Dean?” Sam whirls on his brother, annoyance choking his words. 

“Since when have you given a crap about the vessels?”

There is an awkward pause, because they aren’t vessels, well, they are, but they are people, they are humans, like him, like Dean, and it doesn’t stand to be missed by the two as they stare each other down. 

“Sammy, we’ve done enough damage-“

“Oh please, don’t go off on your sad hero ramble. We kill _everyone_ , so what difference does it make? How about all the demons we’ve ever killed? All the times we haven’t been able to exorcise them first?

“And, shouldn’t you be _happy_ that Cas is back? I mean, sure, he seems to be as lucky as us with life, but you didn’t seem all too thrilled at the notion of him being gone for good last month.”

Silence is Dean’s response, and after a terse stretch of several seconds, Sam sighs heavily, shakes his head in disappointment, and stalks towards the door of the motel.

“Sam…" Dean tries, but the younger brother doesn't respond. "Sammy… _Sam_ , where are you going?”

“I don’t know, Dean, away from here.”

Dean opens his mouth to say something, but the door slams shut, and, suddenly, he’s alone. 

“Awesome.”

What ensues is three bottles of beer, a rushed and shitty job of cleaning his pistol, and a haphazard attempt to watch porn, all of which occurs within three hours. Neither of the endeavours achieves the victory of distraction from his stupid thoughts, which keep meandering back to Cas, and that damned vessel. Sure, it wasn't what Dean would call his type -not busty or hippy at all, and he could have sworn there was muscle, toned and defiant, lacing that thin, athletic build. Not to mention the wide set shoulders, just as broad as Cas's, er, Jimmy's, which were only noticeable when you really looked, and the long hair sweeping just above them was a bit of a distraction. And the skin...like honeyed brown, soft and...ugh. Dean mutters curses and throws his hands up. 

Porn ends up being the possibly worst idea because half way through this stupid girl makes that same squint-y confused look as she makes her debut on set with some guy who’s hair is spike-y and dirt-blonde brown and the way she looks at him sometimes is like he’s something precious and -What the fuck?

By the turn of the fourth hour, Dean is beyond disgruntled, having shoved his headphones so far into his ears that it almost hurts, the music turned up so loud that his head rings. Which, ultimately, inadvertently, reminds him of Cas. 

Cas, who, of course, is now a girl. 

“Son of a bitch.”

He spins the dial up on the volume of his mp3 player until the words are a jarring marathon of distorted sound blaring through his head. Cas, who has the same familiar hints even in this new vessel; same deep eyes, although they were now the colour of dirt instead of oceans; same messy dark hair; same rectangular edged face, still boyish, basically androgynous, but with the subtle hint of femininity now. Same clothes. Same trench coat. Same damn solemn look, same sense of lost kitten picked off the side of the road. 

Dean sighs and opens his eyes, wondering belatedly when he’d thrown himself onto the motel bed. It smells like rust and dirt and mould, something wet and heated, and he turns narrowed eyes to the rumbling expanse of the AC unit that he can practically feel rumbling away from across the room. He just knows it’s going to be one of those nights. 

 

\- o0o -

 

Sam comes back with fast food that he shoves in the fridge. Dean’s in the shower, running the water so hot that steam is billowing out from beneath the door. Sam makes a face, rolling his eyes Heavenward and turns to the AC which is practically blowing out icicles. Of course. He finishes putting away the burger and drink in the mini fridge before ambling over and setting the temperature back to a mid 7o range, relaxing as the shuddering contraption stalls and ceases its effluence of cold air. 

By the time Dean gets out of the shower, Sam has managed to make due with a water bottle to brush his teeth, essentially ready for bed. He’s under the covers, turned away from the bathroom, when Dean curses with a sheen of sweat over his brow. His shower had been ruined when his damnable thoughts had decided to trail back to Cas and his shiny new vessel that wasn’t shiny but that would probably look glow-y with water on it, and how his was now hers and would her breasts look bigger if the nipples poked out –and it all went downhill from there.

Needless to say, Dean was now irritated, uncomfortable, and slightly panic-y. 

It would almost go down as the worst night in history had he not gone to grab another beer, only to find a burger and drink waiting patiently for him. He throws a grin and a mutter of ‘awesome’ under his breath in Sammy’s honour, then goes to town before hitting the hay for the night.


	2. Finis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So Dean does the only thing he knows how to -he drives down the road with the radio up and drinks the night away when he gets to the motel.

It starts out like any other hunt. Regular thing, the usual stuff. Nothing crazy, compared to all the angel crap that's been coming down. And for once, no demons. Supposedly it was just a bunch of witches, which, in hindsight, usually entailed a demon but hey, so it was overlooked. Dean thinks it'll be routine. That's how it starts. Sam gets a call, some tip off from another hunter who had been in the area but had to pull back because there was some personal thing that came up that he had to take care of. Probably a kid. Dean makes a note of it with a sour face and a nonchalant shrug that denotes his 'I don't care' facade, even though the mere notion makes his stomach twist and he thinks of his dad and how much stronger he was than Dean is, down in hell, and all Dean can think about for the rest of the afternoon is 'I broke, he didn't'. 40 bloody years, and Dean can't bring himself to look Sam full in the eye when he thinks about that. 

Regardless, they pack up from the ratty motel room they'd been crashed at, stowing their gear after making sure everything was working and in proper order. Holy water stocked, salt sacks full, bullets ready, knives sharpened, blades gleaming, proper stakes of specific wood pre-dipped in the required blood. Good to go. So they load up, and Dean drives with the windows down because, fuck it, so what if the drag is going to make a gas stop come sooner than later, he's too busy trying to clear his head. That's the picture; Sam in the passenger seat, flipping through John's journal with the absentmindedness of trying to remain productively preoccupied, Dean in the driver's seat, intermittently gripping too tightly to the steering wheel and wondering, idly, now and again, when they pass a car with some tousle-headed brunette, where Castiel is and what his feathered-butt is up too. 

They make it to the destination with time to spare; Sam suggests they shouldn't try anything till night because it's a small town, Delphos, Ohio, middle of Bumfuk nowhere, and Dean is all to eager to agree. He could use a burger and a soda and some fries, and only manages to roll his eyes when Sam mentions something about a salad. Plant food. Plant head. 

He's not really sure how they end up here. 

"Jesus-christ!" Sam's voice is an echoing stutter, all pressure and constrained panic. He's staring at Dean with wide eyes, that _look_ that reminds Dean of a five year old who can't comprehend he just scraped his knees open, scrawled all over his face. Dean shifts, a flare of pain sent jumping jaggedly through his chest, and forgets to breathe. 

"I thought" gasp "you said" heave "it was just some witches!"

Dean plants a hand on the wall, despite the cold slime that coats his palm, slipping into the cracks. They're in the dank dark of some cutaway dungeon-hall-thing, built beneath a farm house. A farm house. And Dean could laugh if it weren't for the huge gash splitting him up the side, stretching like some macabre tattoo from just above his left hip to his third rib. 

Somehow, they had managed to neglect the notion that these witches weren't just a bunch of convoluted teenagers wanting to get out of this dead-beat town. No, it had to be some 2oo-year old nut jobs, spewing nonsense about how they weren't going to end just because God had given up on humanity. Dean, who for the most part had thought he'd done pretty well taking the one guy out from behind, wanted to know how they had _any_ idea about the impending apocalypse, was about to assault the girl with pig tails who he thought couldn't have been out of high school when she flicked her wrist and sent him sprawling into a glass cased cabinet. Hence the gash. Sam had to pry it out after he'd hurled them both through a wooden door before the second witch could melt their faces off with whatever spell they were throwing, which seemed to heat the air like plasma.

"Well, everyone in town made them out to be," Sam falters, searching for the right word. In the silence, Dean winces. "Easy." Sam tries, making a face as if to imply 'how-was-I-supposed-to-know'. They had done the research, scoped out the place; it met the usual criteria. Dead Flora, lack of animal life altogether, and of course, the usual witch-y awesomeness with the hex bags that had been dropping the townsfolk like flies. But there had been no indication that they weren't your usual run of the mill witches, no old portraits in a town museum, no creepy 'old family that has owned the place for centuries' vibe that any of the townsfolk had implied. It was supposed to be an easy job; get in, get out, gank some bitches on the way. But that rarely seemed to be the case nowadays. 

"Awesome" Dean hisses around the pull of gravity that is doing its best to drag whatever is left of Dean's blood onto the floor. The whole side of his pant leg is soaked. 

"Any idea where the hell we" cringe "are?"

Sam makes a noise, shifts, and Dean closes his eyes, listening to the nothing sound of lack of pursuit. Where the hell did they go?

"I have no clue. I think...I think they might be waiting for us," Sam hedges, scratching his head. He's shifting nervously, hovering with antsy hands, and Dean can feel his worried stare. He ignores it. 

"I'm fine," Dean grumbles, although he refuses to move an inch more. They've managed to stumble their way pretty far, or, at least, from what it had felt like, an eternity. Dean guesses his perception probably isn't that accurate. 

Next thing he knows, Sam is saying Cas's name in some desperate, trying-to-sound-dignified-ish prayer, and Dean is muffling a curse. The tell tale hail of Castiel's presence refuses to come, though, and after several tense moments, Sam is hefting Dean into his side, holding his hip hard and lifting most of the weight off as they begin to trudge off into the darkness.

"This place probably dead ends," Dean muses aloud, but Sam merely grunts, and so he's left to his thoughts and the annoying pull of muscle and tissue and skin as he stumbles alongside Sam's taller form, leaning heavily against him for support. 

Hours could have passed, or maybe it's just a few minutes, but as abruptly as this tumult of crap they've landed themselves into starts, it takes a brighter turn. They end up at some small alcove, rounded area of all stone, with scones holding torches. Something straight out of a medieval book. Dean hands Sam a bloodied lighter, and he goes to work illuminating the room, only to reveal that, yes, it does dead end, and it looks like some sacrificial alter. There are blood stains so deep that the stone has turned black beneath an alter long enough to encompass a grown man, and shelves lined with who-knows-what and scattered paraphernalia all over the room. But Dean is too busy watching the black edge around his vision to really care. 

Sam's voice wavers in, a warble, something leaden with the weight of concern. He's saying his name, or something like 'kite' and 'suma's umin', and Dean barely registers the distinct click of footsteps on the stone floor. He thinks in a haze of languidness that he should be worried about Sam. But as the sound gets closer, the impending doom of magic renting the air or traumatic force ripping him apart doesn't come. Instead, he feels a touch at his forehead, cool water that burns and relieves washing over him, and then suddenly everything is stark and bright and he's blinking back into focus. Castiel is standing over him, face concerned, the knit in his brow wrinkling the skin above his eyes, making them look even more solemn than usual. Dean blinks twice, realizes he's staring ,drops his gaze to Castiel's mouth, then flicks his gaze over to wherever Sam has moved off to. Sam's face, in contrast, is all relief and eased tension, his shoulder slacking as he looks at Dean and then to Castiel.

"Thanks," he rushes.

"What were you two thinking," Castiel bites back, whirling on Sam, and Dean teeters for a second before thumping Castiel at the elbow. 

"Hey, lay off. It's a case, and obviously you dick bags aren't helping to stop the murders going on in this town."

Blue eyes narrow at him, but Dean doesn't relent his own unimpressed stare, and, like all the other times, Castiel relents, dropping his gaze to sigh heavily in the human form of exasperation. 

"You could have gotten yourselves killed, or cursed," he admonishes, but his voice lacks the severity of a true reprimand, so Dean just grins and winks at Sam. 

"Well, so are they still up there?" Dean jerks a thumb in the direction of the darkened corridor. Castiel nods curtly, opens his mouth, but as he does so, a searing light abruptly fills the room, followed by a shock wave that shakes Dean and Sam to the bones. Dean recovers just in time to catch a glimpse of a shadow peeling away from the wall just beyond where Castiel had stood. Instinctively, he grabs for his weapon, only to find he must have left it where it dropped when he'd smashed into the glass cabinet. He shifts back, looking for Sam, just in time to catch the idiot bum rushing the figure. The two bodies tumble to the floor, Dean panics, a tussle ensues, and then it's over; Sam lands a stab through the throat with Ruby's knife. But even as the creep is dying, gurgling around blood, he's laughing, a raucous sound, wet and choking, but mirthful none the less. 

Dean and Sam share a troubled glance, and then there is silence.

 

\- o0o -

Two weeks pass, and they hear nothing from Castiel. Dean, who can't seem to put a bottle down, throws an empty glass into the trash can of the motel they're at, listening with an idle ear as Sam talks to Bobby over the phone, concern colouring his words, and then tunes it out as the conversation shifts from demons and angels to some lame cases about Vamps and whatever else. Dean is irritated, he's pissed, and it annoys him even more that he's not convinced he should be concerned at all. But, come on, the guy could at least give a heads up or a call or _something_ to say he's fine. It was just a banishment, right? _Right?_

"Dean" Sam's voice breaks through his internal rant, and Dean looks up to be startled by the appearance of a woman in the middle of the room. He glares at the intrusion, frowning, and crosses his arms over his chest. 

"Oh, what now?"

"Really?" The angel tilts her head, narrowing her eyes into a glare that could quell even the most asinine child. Copper toned hair and harsh, steely green eyes that hold fathomless spans of existence within their intricacies make Dean feel infinitely small and insignificant. She's thin lipped and looking all the world as if she'd rather be somewhere else. "That's not any way to greet a guest. Honestly."

Sam is being useless, gawking. 

"Anyway," she continues, moving right along with the eloquence of an aged professor, dressed the part in a fitted grey suit, the skirt hugging to her thighs. "I'm here on Castiel's behalf. He's been destroyed, you're on your own." And then she's gone. 

Sam is speechless. And Dean? 

Dean's stuck on the hard tear of emptiness that has suddenly demolished his gut. 

 

\- o0o -

 

Two more weeks pass. They total three hunts, seven kills, and ten injuries -all minor and taken care of in the dingy bathrooms of the motel rooms they stay at. Sam is handling things pretty well, keeping up the pretense of looking for any and all angel lore while they're out and keeping up the calm while Dean slowly unravels at the seams with the disdain of not being able to sleep, though, when questioned, he merely growls an 'I'm fine' and blames it on too much coffee and pop. 

Castiel is dead, again, and Dean finds it gets harder to sleep at night as the days drag on. 

The latest case they get involves some poor sap who looks unnervingly like Jimmy, stark blue eyes staring blankly out at Dean when they find the corpse lying on the floor in the Wendigo's cave. He takes it out on the creature, burning it to a crisp when they catch it in the trap Sam had orchestrated, its screams reverberating through his skull and easing the clutter of tension there. 

On the way back to the motel, Sam keeps his worry down by suggesting they let some fresh air in. Dean acquiesces, but no words follow; he's too busy thinking. There's no changing it this time. God hasn't set a resurrected Castiel back to perch on their shoulders, Dean tells himself, and makes a face as he wonders why that even matters now. 

One less friend. One less ally to rely on.

So Dean does the only thing he knows how to -he drives down the road with the radio up and drinks the night away when he gets to the motel.


	3. Remit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel shows up, and Dean is stumped.

Several expanses of events transpire, and It finds Itself growing restless, so much so that the flare it expels disrupts several solar systems, causing a super nova and a cataclysmic explosion that results in the formation of five different nebulae. Balthazaar is an utterance of asteroids across the face of a dying star, ushering in attempted comfort. Calm. Be still. Be-

It decides, in an abruptness that stills ice trailing from a comet, that It will find another way. 

And so It does. 

The search takes up even more of Its patience, stretching the veil thin, making It squirm with the anxiety of hydrogen bursting, small spurts of stars, coiled plasma. When It finally finds one, the vessel is trudging home from a pier, bundled in a jacket that makes the body swim, slim limbs laced with toned muscle obscured by the folds, hair unkempt and wild from walking in the wind. She's whispering the Lord's prayer under her breath, sending out small puffs of translucent fog with each syllable, the air chilled and winding around her, nipping at her face, bringing carmine to her nose and cheeks. It caresses her shoulder, touches her forehead, whispers with distant gentleness. She jerks at the intrusion, blinking owlish eyes rimmed with black from lack of sleep. Stops in her tracks on the empty street, illuminated by a singular lamp in the distance. 

Coaxing her acceptance turns out to be unnecessary; she is a brilliant mind, but a weary soul that brings a lethargy that sinks into the bones, sullen and hollow. She murmurs condolences with her thanks and praise, repeating endlessly the Lord's prayer as she cuts hair at the salon she works at with an ease and precision that comes naturally and not from practice. She could be a surgeon. But she sees dead bodies in her head, endless caskets carried by fellow comrades. She's been to the darker parts of humanity's avarice. She longs for the order of militaristic rituals and guidelines, itches for the command and structure, the closeness, the bonding. What she is left with is a distant echo that keeps her awake at night, dreaming of sand and broken faces, reaching for a rifle that is no longer there. She stares at the ceiling and tries to tuck it all away with the weariness for the dread of morning. It merely asks without aversion to the truth, and she ascents with one condition: send her soul onward to Heaven, and what is left is yours. So It does. 

 

\- o0o -

 

Finding the Winchesters is harder than initially anticipated. It peruses the land mass that the populace has deemed America, or something about being united despite the plethora of divisions. It fumbles with the device that transmits and receives radio waves, bristling in a rustle of distorted air when no voice intones a welcoming salutation, and merely clicks into a vast silence. It expands, sighing out frustration, unravelling molecules to dilute Its frustration, and continues in Its search, seeking out the aid of their known accomplice and friend, Bobby Singer. 

Despite Its intentions, Its reception is taken with an upheaval of calm, exemplified with epithets and a reprove about calling before dropping in unannounced, followed closely by bewilderment and confusion, which It waves away impatiently. Castiel negates the comments, deeming them meaningless, and conveys Its desire to find the brothers. Bobby gives It the answer with a description of the 'job' they are on, a Djinn somewhere in Colorado, all the while Bobby eyes Castiel with a wary countenance, as if unsure this new vessel actually contains who It claims. It doesn't dwell on this blatant distrust, though, and departs with a rush that sends the particles scurrying in disarray behind It. 

When It arrives, It can sense the genie and immediately flits to the location: an abandoned warehouse on the far side of the city, bordering the outskirts. What greets It there is a chaotic reception of pained grunts and yelling. Sam is thrown bodily across the room into a chain-link fence guarding crates of dust and cobwebs. Dean, on the adjacent end, is being choked to death and poisoned, veins in his neck standing out starkly in the pale stretch of skin, while the bronzed offender glows blue and hungry. Castiel grabs the genie by the back of the head, smites it from the inside out, burning through the crafted network of organs and tissue, bone, sinew, muscle, nerves; extinguishes the glimmer of magic with an ire that is absolute. Dean drops to the ground coughing, rubbing his throat and wincing into the sensation of blown corpuscles, and Sam staggers up brandishing the demon girl's knife. 

Castiel turns and lifts slimmer brows at the Winchester. 

"I'm sorry it took so long." It begins, and Sam's face contorts into an array of confusion and hesitation. "But it took me longer than I'd preferred to find another vessel strong enough to contain me and not deteriorate."

The younger Winchester's mouth falls open, the grip on his blade slackening as he lowers his tensed stature into a more eased position, while behind them, Dean gets to his feet. 

"Cas?"

It nods, smiling with a slight pull that brings a faint crease to Its eyes. 

Dean makes a gesture with his mouth, as if to say 'oh', but nothing comes out.


	4. Disarray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You're joking." 
> 
> But he's not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter currently in progress.

"Wait," Sam interrupts, holding up a hand as his forehead creases with the effort of convoluted thought. They're back at the motel they'd pitched up at for the job, a den of faded garnet and gold furnishing the walls to match the honey-comb and grey colouring of the beds. Castiel pauses in Its explanation, canting Its head slightly as It waits for the consent to continue. "So...your friend, that other angel that came by, she told us you were dead." 

It frowns with a knit of the brow, skin rumpling like a sheet. 

"Jimmy, my old vessel, was obliterated in whatever sundering spell that witch performed." Its lips quirk, annoyance a distant flicker, a flame over water. "It is...difficult to reassemble him, and I was tired of waiting."

Sam seems to understand that explanation well enough, and nods with a knowing exasperation, as if losing a vessel is commonplace to his life. Castiel wonders if maybe that is how he must feel, having been killed and resurrected so many times. 

Dean's voice spears the air, then, acute and barbed, making It flinch. 

"So what, now you're a _chick_?"

It narrows Its eyes at the older Winchester, not missing the slanderous emphasis Dean puts on the word used to describe baby chickens. 

"Obviously," It quips, and directs Its attention back to Sam. 

But Dean doesn't let it go, he goes on a rant, throwing his hands up in the air, as if Castiel has committed an atrocity rivalling that of genocide by the millions. It can't ascertain the reasoning behind the tantrum, nor the way Dean refuses to fully look at It, and It begins to grow unsettled as the minutes tick by. So the exchange transpires, Castiel flees, and Dean is left to his own devices for several hours before Sam finally comes back.

The next day, Castiel waits for Dean outside, leaning with languid impudence against the Impala, whom, for whatever reason Castiel has yet to discern, affectionately claims as his child. The familiar green eyes that Castiel pieced together glare at him with suspicion that Castiel doesn't understand why It warrants. 

"You're upset," It points out, conveying the observance. Dean halts in his saunter, pulls his lips in, rolling his mandible to and fro before sighing and shaking his head. 

"Nah, man, I'm just tired."

Castiel regards the other silently, and Dean tacks on after a tense moment; "I'm glad you're back."

And Castiel knows that that is Dean's way of apologizing, so It accepts it, smiling with a wry tug of the lips that crease the edges of Its eyes. 

"Glad to be back," It returns, and moves fluidly out of the way as Dean takes a step towards the driver side door of the car. He hesitates, hand on the door handle, and gives Castiel a look that It can't dissect beyond deliberation. 

"Hey, you wanna ride shot gun. Going to grab breakfast." And when Castiel doesn't immediately respond, "You know, us meat sacks gotta eat."

Castiel nods, and transitions into the passenger seat, waiting patiently for Dean to settle in and start the car. A ball of hydrogen burns within Its chest, pulsating now and again with flares that snap and lash out against Its rib cage. It ignores it for the most part, preoccupied with the way Dean moves against the leather seat, going about the tedious aspects of starting the metal contraption. The impala roars to life, wakeful, lashing out against the quiet of the late morning, and then their off down the road, looking for the nearest restaurant that looks appetizing enough to stop.

\- o0o -

 

They end up at a diner, some small homely place, advertising endless pancakes and coffee. They're sitting, shoulder to shoulder on little, red-cushioned stools at the long stretch of counter, waiting for a to-go order of hash browns, hot cakes, two coffees, fruit crepes (of course), and a heaping load of sausages and bacon. Dean finds the closeness to be unnerving and comforting at the same time. 

"So," he meanders, watching Cas scrutinize a menu with that squint-y, kitten face he always makes. Cas pauses in his perusal, lifting eyebrows in a face that is new but nostalgic all the same. A walking contradiction. 

"Just couldn't wait to get back."

Castiel is silent. 

Dean groans inwardly, smirking with a twist of the lips, taking another sip of the coffee he'd been offered for the wait. 

"I thought you said you weren't here to perch on my shoulder."

It's meant to be a grumble, something muttered under-breath, discarded and forgotten and maybe even unheard, but his voice is a little too loud, carries a little too prominently, and he winces as Castiel shifts beside him, leaning forward to peer into the Winchester's eyes. Cas's hair is slanting over one shoulder, slipping across his ( _hers_ , Dean corrects) cheek, framing the androgynous face. 

"I like to help," It offers, as if the elaboration is something needed to ward of sorrow. Dean realizes with an inkling of surprise, that Cas thinks that he had been admitting something that made him feel, what? Unwanted? A chore? Dean sighs and rubs a hand across his face. This conversation is already taking a wrong turn. 

"Right, okay, thanks buddy." Dean casts him ( _her_ dammnit) a reassuring smile, and Castiel relaxes, sitting back once more on the stool that does little to ease the tension now balled tightly in Dean's chest. 

Castiel, on the other hand, continues in Its favoured predisposition of watching, tracking the movements of patrons and workers through the establishment, peeling apart the outward view of flesh to reveal the souls that bloom forth, dancing and radiating raw energy and power, each different but alike, a beautiful collage that puts It at ease. 

Their order arrives, and, after loading all the plastic bags in their arms, Dean and Castiel go off on their way. 

 

\- o0o -

Dean finds out, eventually, after five more hunts and a nasty run-in with some Siren (which, like the witches, somehow ends up being inanely old) that brings up a horrible, stupid, _stupid_ notion that Cas is more devoted to Dean than the Heavenly Host, which, afterwards, Dean swears that if Sam mentions _anything_ to the angel he will personally drop-kick him to the curb and never look back -that Castiel is, infact, still working on his ( _her_ ) vessel. The current one is attracting too much attention. 

"That's the third time," Sam chuckles, making a face as he tries to remain collected. Castiel is looking perplexed, brow wrinkled over keen eyes, and Dean is trying to stamp down a sudden flare of hatred towards other men in general as they stump through the mall. 

"Why would I be a model?" Castiel asks, after several feet bring nothing but Sam's muffled laughter and Dean's fuming silence. The man who had made the comment had tried to give out a card, only to have Dean forcefully divert him with a reflexive grab of Castiel's hand, dragging her bodily away while Sam made quick excuses and pardons and following behind. Dean had let go of Castiel's hand, though, after It had looked down at the connection, as if he'd been burned. "I have no discernible schematic that any of you would be able to comprehend."

"No, Cas, not a representative display, a fashion model, the people that wear clothing, like, look, right here," and he points to a sign in the middle of the walkway portraying a pallid girl with intense green eyes framed with purple makeup and startling diamonds that twinkle at her ears, neck, and lip. An advertisement for a jewellery store somewhere in the mall. Castiel stops, staring intently at the image, albeit with a confounded expression, as if this explanation makes even less sense than the previous one.

"Would you two cut the crap, we're supposed to be hunting. Changeling, remember?" Dean snaps, and both Sam and Castiel glance at the eldest Winchester with a mixture of affrontedness and bemusement. 

"Yes," Castiel says simply, and sweeps past them, the tail of Its trench coat lifting with the movement, revealing the slim legs clad in the black leggings It had opted to switch to after tripping over the too-lose slacks It had been wearing during the first initial days in this new vessel. Dean had been overtly crabby that day, when Sam had offered to help Castiel out, the sympathy doing nothing to dampen Dean's snide comments on the endeavour. Sam and Cas had stopped by a small thrift store in Michigan, where they had stopped to investigate what turned out to be a rather placid ghost case, and when they returned to the motel, Dean was more than a little miffed as Castiel held out Its hands, drapped in a fitted, white button down collared shirt, the sleeves of which drapped slightly over Its knuckles, the tails hiding the neither regions and backside, and black leggings that disappeared beneath the gleam of dress boots at the ankle. That same, backwards blue tie hung snugly about her neck. Dean had gawked, grinned sheepishly, then shoved the trench coat into Castiel's arms without another word, fleeing from the room. Now, Dean catches himself trying to imagine what Cas would look like without the trench coat, or the curve of white beneath that, and snaps out of it with a flinch that makes Sam look sideways at him. 

"Honestly, Dean," Sam mutters under his breath, and the older Winchester throws Sam a foul look while Cas continues to traipse just ahead of them. 

"What?"

"Would you cut it out already? It's not like he's...Castiel isn't a girl or a guy, remember?"

Dean stops, throwing Sam his best incredulous, what-are-you-even-talking-about expression, but the big dolt merely rolls his eyes and keeps walking. 

"You're joking." Dean grumbles, trying to save face. Sam snorts derisively. 

He's not.


	5. Paroxysm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Don't - _don't_ -CAS!"

Looking back, Dean would have thought it was ironic, maybe even rueful; there is no denying the pressure at the back of his head that convinces him he deserves it, a sick sense of punishment and greed. This, you cannot have. 

\- o0o -

"Would you two be _quiet_?" Sam hisses, his voice carrying harshly through the night air. 

Dean pouts, lips pushing out, reminiscent of a duck, and Castiel finds that the expression loosens the hardened knot that had formed in Its chest. It doesn't let the change show, though, and instead, throws Its gaze over to the seemingly empty house affront the graveyard. 

They're somewhere in Arkansas, a town being preyed upon by some force that rivals demonic presence, but that neither Sam nor Dean could find any conclusive evidence of. Castiel, likewise, is left with the irksome discontent that whatever is here has blocked Its ability to sense it, and, therefor, find it, and so the heavy forethought of danger hangs low on Its head, bunching Its shoulders up around Its neck. The whole scenario is blatantly ominous. 

"Right, so, what's the plan," Dean grudgingly asks, switching gears with the ease of a transmission. Castiel takes the moment of sidetracked attention to study the older Winchester's profile in the silhouetted moonlight. 

"Well, Dean, I don't know, we haven't exactly come up with one yet." 

Sam rolls his eyes to the other, then turns his gaze back to the old house, derelict and apparently forgotten, all boarded-up windows and probably locked doors. But it is here that they tracked the epicentre of disappearances to, and here that has no sign of animal life, no sign of anything really, but for the faint scent of sulfur -their only other clue to the culprit being demonic. 

"Yeah, okay, great, let's go."

And Dean is up and moving, sticking close to the gnarled and barren brush of thorny branches and trees. 

"Dean-"

Sam is after him, reaching out, voice dying off after a resigned expulsion of air in a sigh. 

Castiel watches the two, frowning heavily, the distinction of frayed edges and maleficent distortion emanating out from the house in a miasma that wavers in and out of Its perception. Blip in the radar. It hesitates, then flits after them, ending up three feet away from Dean's shoulder. 

 

\- o0o -

As presumed, the doors had been locked. It's decided, though, that instead of busting through a window they'll just pick the front door, which Dean does so with relative ease. Castiel, standing slightly away from the two brothers, fights the urge to place hands on both their shoulders and throw them back into the motel room they had left behind a few miles south. 

Once inside, the flash lights come on, and Castiel lifts a hand to produce a low glow of fluorescence that Dean regards with awe and something akin to annoyance. They move off, despite Castiel's insistence that they not separate, but Sam is already in the other room, and Dean is heading for the stairs. Castiel falters, watching the receding back as the darkness falls across it, around it, engulfing the elder Winchester's form, and spasms with a surge of electrons that fritz and spiral outward. It has to clench Its jaw before moving off into the adjacent room. 

Nothing happens, though, for the better half of the hour that they spend investigating; Dean calls to Sam who wanders back into the other room, at a loss, and the two turn to look for Castiel when the angel lacks the decency to show up at Dean's call. 

"Which room did he go into," Sam is asking, and Dean rolls his shoulders in a shrug when they hear it; a low cracking sound, followed by a thud, and then silence, tense and strained. Dean feels the hackles raise, the hairs along his arms rising up as well, when a sudden tremor cracks a floor board. 

"Holy shi-"

They're running then, in tandem, urgency pushing up a surge of adrenaline in their bodies, pulsating with the abrupt quick-time of their hearts. They stumble into the room, Dean's voice cracking once as he calls out Cas's name. Sam is thumping against the walls with his fists, looking for hollow spots while trying to make enough racket to elicit an appearance from whatever is beneath them. 

It feels as if it takes forever.

Then Dean finds it, a symbol etched into the woodwork of the far wall, and he just brushes fingertips over it when a panel slides open, revealing a passage that winds down into a curve of inky black. 

His breath hitches, heart stuttering, before he calls out to Sam and descends, not waiting for the younger to catch up. 

His flashlight does little to illuminate more than the steps that he's nearly tripping down in his rush, and he barely registers whether or not Sam is behind him when he stumbles into sudden incandescence, squinting with several blinks as his eyes strain to adjust. The first thing he comprehends is Castiel, strung up like a parody of Jesus on the crucifix, hair obscuring his face, but the distinct scent of blood thick in the air. There is a figure by the angel, looming next to Its shoulder, and Dean doesn't recognize him at all; tall, dark, broad shouldered and infinitely intimidating by the sheer essence of danger that radiates from his very presence. 

For a wild moment, Dean wonders if he doesn't realize that Dean's even there. 

"Shhhh -sh-sh" 

But he knows better. 

"Now, see? Look what you've gone and done; interrupted our little party." The thing turns, searing yellow eyes stopping Dean's heart with a painful lurch. _Oh shit oh shit_ \- he's thinking, but it's not Azazel, no possible way; that yellow eyed bitch was killed years ago, thanks to Sam. The demon grins, showing brilliantly white teeth that somehow look serrated from here, and Dean's hand on his gun feels loose and slipping. 

All he sees are hands gripping the side of Castiel's face, lifting it up to reveal streaks of blood, stark and glistening, trailing from somewhere above Its left eye, painted across the angel's lips, dribbling down the chin. It almost looks like a caress. Those yellow eyes gleam out, viewing Dean askance, a sneer pulling at the demon's mouth. 

"So that's him, eh?" And his grip vanishes, allowing Castiel's head to loll forward weakly. Dean sucks in a breath as he notices the odd shaped cleaver in the demon's hand. 

"He must like to watch."

"Don't" Dean immediately pleads, though it sounds more like a demand; the demon has the cleaver to Castiel's breast, pressed against torn fabric that looks like feathers from across the room. Dean can see the slashes, the endless tears through that new flesh Castiel is in, all over; neck, chest, arms, legs; a pair of ghastly lines that feather along the inside of her thighs forms a lump in Dean's throat.

The demon moves the cleaver down, eliciting something of a whimper from Casitel's broken form, and the scent of rain abruptly fills the air, and Dean can see the utter pain that whatever the weapon is causing Castiel as plain as day on the angel's face. His hands ache. 

The cleaver dips down to Castiel's hip, and Dean can see the protrusion of bone there, just before the demon slices down.

" _Don't_ -CAS?!"

The angel arcs up, mouth opening around a brilliance of light that slowly blooms out. But the demon covers her mouth with his filthy hands, caked in red, and grins with arrogant condescending glee at the hunter.

"I'm sorry, boys, but this is a" and he pauses, voice dripping off the next word like bile, acidic and _wrong_ "private affair."

Dean ignores him. 

"Cas!?" He calls out, overriding the chuckle that his shout elicits. He hears Sam thudding down the steps behind him, but his attention is stuck on the way Castiel looks so human right now, defeated and vulnerable. He wills him to move, the worry edging up a notch in his chest, compressing his spine. _**Move** dammit_ , but Castiel is still, stoic and unresponsive. Dean notices the blood then, all over the floor, tons of it, too much, way too much for a human anyway. His breath catches again in his throat when he tries to call out for Castiel again. 

"Ho- Shi- Dean, is that- Cas?!" 

Dean thinks he might have glimpsed the twitch of response in Castiel's head, before his vision tips and the world hurtles upside down. Pain smacks into his back, collision a slam of flesh on concrete. He coughs out, losing his breath, and collapses in a heap. Sam starts, eyes widening before he's rushing off to scamper behind a wooden support shaft, heaving as the air just behind him sears with an unseen spell, crackling, sending shivers up his spine. 

"Dean?!" Sam hisses, looking to his brother's crumpled body. His stomach flops into his knees, and Sam thumps his head back against the wood while raucous laughter fills the room. 

"Pathetic. This," and Sam can hear the physical gesturing, "this is what you have for help?" 

"How quaint."

Sam sucks in a breath, trying to will Dean to his feet, but he doesn't move. He's on his own. 

 

\- o0o -

 

The stand off feels more like whack-a-mole game to Sam, and he's dodging as best he can between support shafts, wood splinters scattering through the air, loud snaps and cracks hailing each jump and dive that Sam makes. 

For all he knows, Dean is dead, lifeless and over just like that, and he's too busy trying to get close enough to get Castiel down from whatever binding has the angel secured to the slanted cross. He's angry, and scared witless, and he's trying to figure out what to do and how to accomplish anything beyond keeping his skin when he hears it. And it makes his stomach squirm and his nerves flare and wither; it makes him want to yell and cry out with a lament he's felt too many times before. 

Castiel's screaming. 

The sound is tinged with the undertones of incomprehensible decibels that faintly remind Sam of the glasses people play with their fingertips. He looks without thinking too, head peering out from beyond shattered wood that offers a jagged view; Castiel's head thrown back, mouth wide and hollow, eyes lost in their gaping expanses, unseeing, glowing faintly with a light that plays shadows across the rafters above. Sam registers the glint of something silver or metallic in the demon's hand, slivers through the fingers, and realizes with a sick sense of realization that the rest of whatever the demon is holding has been plunged into Castiel's side, just below the ribs. 

But it offers him the chance he needs. 

He sprints off from behind the wreckage of his hiding spot, running as fast as his leaden legs will carry him, and he feels all out of whack, torso too heavy, legs too light, arms lose and fading. The air burns in his lungs. He doesn't know if he'll make it, and then, suddenly, he's close, and he throws himself against the demon, hurtling their bodies into one of the shafts with a resounding thud that shakes Sam's head, rocking his brain around in his skull so that he sees small blips of light and colour for several seconds before a force shoves him across the floor, sending him spinning. 

"You impudent little twit." The demon curses, and Sam grits his teeth around a stifled yell as blood surges up through his mouth, his lungs collapsing around pressure he can't defend against. He gurgles, trying for air, dying, when the onslaught stops just as abruptly as it had begun. Sam blinks dazed eyes, wincing as he fixates his gaze on the demon, and finds that Dean is behind him, gun to his head. 

"Back off, bitch."

And then he pulls the trigger. 

 

\- o0o -

Dean empties three bullets into the demon's head, which doesn't accomplish much but gives him time to allow Sam to recover. When the younger brother does, he's up on his feet and hurtling back into the proximity of the two, shoving Ruby's knife so deep into the demon that he can feel the give of flesh and the sudden surge of warmth as the sinew and tissue parts like the red sea, spilling blood all over his hands while the flashes of smouldering life flickers like fire, electricity that flares throughout the entire room. 

Sam believes in God. Just like he believes in Lucifer, just like he believes in luck. 

This, though, he can't quite believe. 

They're alive. Alive, not dead and resurrected, not gutted and then filleted and put back together again. They're just...fine. 

In the quiet that ensues, Sam merely stares in bewilderment, regarding the corpse with a befuddled head that may be a forming concussion. Dean is already moving, over by Cas, murmuring to him, trying to rouse him; his hands fly over the leather bindings with the strange markings, making quick work of getting Castiel free. The angel slumps into the older Winchester's arms like a rag doll, all boneless limbs and weariness, and Dean has to fight back the twist of unease that makes his hands convulse at Castiel's back. 

Sam comes over to help out, lifting an arm over his shoulder and bending down to compensate for the height differences. Castiel is wordless, making only subtle noises of discomfort as the three start off for the stairs and the waiting night.


	6. Exsanguination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam is in the bathroom, trying to wash the blood off.

It's reminiscent of harder times, or maybe even brighter times, when things made a little more sense than no sense, and, well, this is just too much. Dean's gnawing at what is left of his knuckles, staring at the motionless body that Castiel has taken up residence in -hair splayed, chest stoic, limbs bonelessly sprawled across the motel bed. He's waiting for _something_ to happen, which feels more like holding breath than anything else, and he's starting to feel like he is suffocating.

Sam is in the bathroom trying to wash the blood off.

And there was so much of it. Too much. All over the floor in that damned basement, sticking like grasping fingers to the bottom of their shoes, making gross squelching sounds beneath their feet as they struggled back to the impala. Cas's trench coat is now a sick shade of maroon, and what's left of her leggings are tattered edges, smiles of red rimed incisors. Dean bites down harder on his knuckles, feeling the pressure, waiting for the knot inside his lungs to come undone. He's listening to the water in the motel sink run, endlessly, vainly, because Sam might as well just admit he's got new tattoos for the amount of red stuck to his skin. 

There's a hole in Castiel's side, stark and mesmerizing, where light is shining through, pure and brilliant and blinding if you try to look directly at it. Dean has the inane urge to touch it, to reach in and watch his fingers be engulfed, because that is Castiel, there, in the luminescence; the real Castiel, not a parody of flesh and bone. That light, _that_ is _God's_ creation, roiling and seething energy that burns eyes out through their sockets and brings the might of the Holy Host down around evil ears. 

Sam turns the sink off, and the cessation of running water brings Dean's thoughts back from the whimsy of suicidal curiosity. He turns to look, surprised to find that Sam has managed a pretty decent job; his skin is a mottled arrangement of his normal skin tone and faded pinks that range in hue. Dean snorts into his knuckles, and Sam blinks with a look of weary puzzlement. 

"Anything?" Sam wonders, looking away to Castiel on the bed. Dean shrugs his shoulders as he begins to shake his head. 

"Na-da. Nothing."

Dean frowns at the angel. 

"He's not dead."

Sam turns to look at his brother, a tension winding through the muscles of his face, but doesn't comment. Instead, he sighs and rubs at the bridge of his nose with two fingers. 

"Look, man, maybe we should go get something to eat, give him- give Cas some space and, who knows, maybe when we get back Cas'll be awake."

If sleeping is what you could call it. 

Dean takes a long moment to look at the searing light that's still shining out of Castiel's vessel before nodding. 

"Yeah, fine."

So they leave. 

 

\- o0o -

For the first time in a long time, Dean would rather be sitting in the motel room on an empty stomach than stuffing his face with the greasy meat that's sitting in front of him. And Sam doesn't miss it, doesn't overlook the way Dean is slow to pick the burger up and stare almost dismissively at it, as if the thing is keeping him from some amount of relief. He chooses not to mention it. Instead, he does his best to mindlessly peruse the venue of patrons in the small diner, looking anywhere but at Dean, who's brooding is starting to become a palpable miasma; it makes the air heavy, the sensation of anxiety ratcheting up with the same slinking of cheap plastic blinds.

After ten minutes of the perpetual lack of improvement, Sam sighs, shoving his now barren plate to the centre of the table. Dean blinks, snapping out of whatever reverie he'd been in (and Sam can guess exactly what said ruminative thought involved, but declines to dredge up the currently incapacitated angel) frowning with a knit to his brow that is more surprise, like having just realized he'd been dozing, and hastily picks up his burger to tear off several bites of the cooling meat. 

Time passes like a slow bleed.

Dean begins to feel as though he's being whittled away. His skin becomes stiff, too tight, his heart too strong, churning away in his chest with an unsettling flutter that makes him think about words like arrhythmia and cardiac arrest. Sam suggests, after an awkward lilt to his tone, that they can't just leave Castiel in the 'condition' she's in, and Dean, for once, doesn't get flustered at the implications. Sam doesn't say anything when Dean hefts her into his arms and stalks off into the small bathroom. Doesn't intrude because he knows Dean doesn't want any help, knows that it matters, somehow, that he be the one to do it. So Sam just takes a walk when he hears the shower burst to life, the sound a settling blanket of white noise.

Inside the bathroom, Dean sits with Castiel in his lap in the tub, lent up against his chest, head lolling, clothes soaking. His fingers wouldn't stop shaking when he bent to take them off, and something felt unbearably wrong about the whole thing. So he leans his head back against slick tile, with a mass of wet dark hair growing itchy plastered along his neck and chest, and watches the light (steadily growing smaller now) that casts rainbow glitters around the entire bathroom in hues of blues and indigo and white. They could be lovers, Dean thinks suddenly, quietly, and like a flower the thought withers, quietly wilting with the swirl of red down the drain. 

The hunts continue, except now with some baggage that is both blatantly visible and touchable. Sam only once prods at Dean's condition, which is falling back into the slosh of beer in the dark hours of the night, and bloodshot eyes in the mornings. Dean bites out some retort about not giving a crap, and Sam, too busy hefting the ridiculously heavy Cas (who looks like he couldn't weigh a buck 2o soaking wet in this particular vessel) from the hotel room to the back seat of the Imapala. It doesn't help, either, that Castiel's current form is unusually tall for a female, Sam guesses close to five-ten, and the hassle of stowing the lifeless bundle of leadened flesh and bones becomes a task both brothers must endeavour upon, with Dean becoming solemn, hands somehow gentle in their roughness, reverant against the skin now clad in one of Dean's old shirts and a pair of briefs much too big for slender hips, holding her up from behind the shoulders. 

Dean can't help but think that Cas looks more like a slim bag of bones sprawled in the back seat, hair mussed and face empty. For some reason, his face reminds Dean of Joan Jett or an ethnic version of Kristen Stewart, to which he begrudgingly affixes 'she' to the thought, before shaking his head and thumping his head back against the headrest. Sam settles into the passenger seat, and Dean snaps the key in the ignition.

The Impala roars to life beneath him, and the long drive to the newest case begins.

\- o0o -

The time begins to blur into a collage of moments, like ink on water, a frightfully fast but enchanting thing. One moment, Dean is sitting at the small motel table, staring at the true Castiel and wanting to commit suicide by touching that light, and the next, he's standing with his hand wrapped too tight around a gun, finger straight and off the trigger (Marine) and Sam is staring at him with a sort of horror struck expression, lost amidst utter bewilderment. The mass of twitching limb and flesh, rendered a riddled approximation of swiss cheese, seems to hiss on the floor of the abandoned warehouse.

They pack up and leave, a smoulder of thick, dark smoke, curling away behind them. 

At the motel (and Sam had to grit his teeth and basically berate Dean that no one was going to stumble upon Cas there with the amount of seals they had put up, and taking him would just be ridiculously more dangerous and stupid anyway) Dean throws his bag with haphazard grace over his bed, where it sails just over Castiel's supine form and smacks into the wall with a dull thud that probably woke up the entire floor.

Sam doesn't quite flinch as purse his lips, clenching his jaw. He knows the way Dean glares at the wall, his eyes flicking bare millimetres to rest on the angel's face; knows that it holds a sea of frustration that seethes to get out. Knows that the almost callous action is still some vain attempt to get Cas to wake up.

Dean had wordlessly began stowing Cas on his bed, taking up the floor or the chair to drink himself numb, and Sam had not the energy nor the heart to say anything on it at all. So he merely grits his teeth and sets his own stuff down on his bed before excusing himself to the bathroom. 

The brief absence is enough to make Dean want to spit, because Cas hasn't moved, and he's tired of feeling like this, tired of not knowing what to do, being helpless, wanting to punch that stupid angel in the face and shake her until her head snaps and her hair gets tangled in his hands. 

And Dean falters. 

He wants to cry, and God-fuck- he almost does, but he holds himself still, muscles tensing, feeling a clot about to burst. 

"Wake up already," Dean growls, and isn't so surprised to hear his own voice, broken and jagged to his ears. Of course Cas doesn't move, of course the stupid, feather-brained, mindless drone isn't going to come through for him. 

He stalks close to the bed, hands fisted, feeling beyond anything but violent, and he is practically vibrating with the sensation, the boil of blood in the veins, pulsing in time to the desperation that writhes beneath.

"I said get." He grabs the front of her shirt, a whole fistful of Led Zepplin, grey material soft and worn, his shirt, Dean's shirt, twisting in his clenching fingers. So tight that his palm hurts, fingers and fabric crushing into a solid discomfort. He vaguely registers that the shirt doesn't rip, even though Castiel doesn't move. 

_"Up."_

And roughly jerks.


	7. Innervate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Oh" he thinks
> 
> "Oh"

Dean is met with a start by two very open, very awake brown eyes, so deep that he feels as if he's about to tilt head-first down the proverbial rabbit hole. They're so close that he can see the many, various patterns of tissue, vast constructions like a framework of land within those orbs, God's fingers dipping down to trace art into the earth. 

He blinks. 

Castiel is awake, her eyes are staring back at him, and he thinks he might be imagining the whole thing. 

Instead, Castiel's voice suddenly exists in his ears. 

"Dean."

Dean is frozen, stock still, hand still fisted in his shirt that she's wearing, the fabric strained against her back. He can just feel the hint of resistance in her lack of strength to support the position -half-up on the bed. Her eyes are so different, but he bets with a sudden, vague thought that blooms in his head that Castiel's eyes are never really his eyes, or her eyes, or any eyes, and the only glimpse he's ever really had of the angel is through the glowing gash in his side.

'Oh' he thinks, and something clicks into place in his head at the sudden revelation. Castiel is an angel, the truest form of Heaven on earth, and Castiel is an _Angel_

'Oh'

Castiel is still staring at him, un-moving, and Dean realizes belatedly that his gaze has begun to trace her face in a triangle, her eyes, to her mouth, to her eyes again, and his breath hitches around the thought that had sprung up so avidly in the bathroom as he held her to his chest, soaked to the bone, with the sound of the shower like an imitation of rain. Pure. 

We could be lovers. 

In that moment, as if compelled by unshakable conviction, Dean wants to kiss Castiel. 

They are a hairsbreadth away, and Dean can't seem to move despite all this, with Castiel still staring up at him, unrelenting, the only trace of comprehension a sort of befuddlement to her countenance. The urge only gets stronger, and Dean is trying to imagine what it would feel like, to press the flesh of her mouth against his own and whether it will feel the same in another 'host' and whether Castiel has a preference, but God damnit, he wants to _kiss_ Cas-

"Dean?"

It's not Castiel this time. Sam is standing in the light of the bathroom archway, wide-eyed and looking torn between concern and relief. Dean's hand slackens, and then he pulls back abruptly, and Castiel does a bit of a fall back onto the bed, wincing into a hiss that seems to lower the temperature of the surrounding air. Dean snatches his gaze back from Sam and blinks stupidly at the angel, mouth slightly parted, all thoughts having ground to a halt. 

"Geez-Cas are you ok?" Sam is walking towards the bed, and Dean just stands there, struck stupid, unable to come up with anything at the moment beyond the mantra that has begun in his head. We could be lovers, we could be lovers, we could be lovers, we could be lovers....

I want to kiss you.

Dean blinks, shakes himself slightly, and comes to see Sam knelt by the bed, talking to Castiel who has managed to prop herself up onto an elbow. She's smiling slightly, if it could be called that, it looks more like a grimace. But Dean has the inane want to shove Sam out the door or to rewind to five minutes ago and just sit in that moment for the rest of his life. He wonders, as he watches them talk, whether that's how Castiel feels all the time, constantly existing in one moment and the next, all at once, all the time, and whether the angel has a moment he favours best. 

Unconsciously, Dean reaches up to touch the hand print Castiel had left on him, and feels as if the entirety of himself has suddenly been put together, nice and neat, as if nothing at all had ever occurred to mar him. Not healed, but as if never having been maimed to begin with.

'Oh' he thinks

'Oh'

 

\- o0o -

An hour goes by, and Sam offers to go out for food and flails for a moment at Castiel because there is still light shining through her side, though the hole now is the size of a quarter. Castiel notes that nothing will suffice.

"I am not...this is fine, I can manage." 

And then Sam is gone, the door to the motel room closing, and Dean feels as if he's just brought his head up from the depths of water, breaching the surface into suddenly stark clarity because the entire time had gone by in a murky haze. He blinks, finds himself sitting on the bed opposite of Cas, and he just stares at the angel, still reeling. 

Castiel has propped herself up with her back resting against the head board, hands folded neatly but child-like in her lap, and Dean looks then to the borrowed clothes. Notes that they are his, and that he likes that, Cas wearing his clothes, and he likes it better than any woman who's ever worn them, likes it better even if Castiel were wearing them on male hips instead. He shifts, and the bed creaks, and Castiel looks over at him, eyes ambivalent, mouth set on a loose purse, as if surprised to find the Winchester still in the room. 

"You didn't go with your brother," It states, although It manages to make the words hold a question within their consonants. Dean nods once, slowly, and then grins, feeling wolfish and all the world invigorated. 

"Yeah well, someone has to babysit," he retorts, though there was nothing to butt against anyway. Castiel merely continues to stare at Dean, so Dean gets up and goes to stand at the edge of the mattress. Again, an urge bursts into his veins, and he finds he wants to lie down and pull the angel into his arms and curl into the sheets. Instead, he fixes the angel with a stern smile.

"Talk to me?"

"About what?"

"How are you? You were out for a while there...you know...scared the shit out of Sam, and me," Dean adds hastily, shrugging his shoulders reflexively. Castiel tips her head, and Dean wants to smack a hand to his face and smooth it down. 

"I'm fine, Dean," Castiel assures, and It looks up at the Winchester, furrowing Its brow slightly, and acknowledges, with a thrum of warmth through Its essence, that the thoughts from earlier are still resounding, like an echo, in the back of Dean's head. It can't quite place the way to broach the notion, though, and so It merely waits, unsure of what 'being lovers' would entail. 

"This," It turns slightly to gesture to the light still glowing from Its side, "Will be closed soon." 

It turns back to Dean, thrumming, and waits with immense patience that It no longer wants to have as the elder brother shifts his weight. It wants to escape from this vessel, suddenly, just for a moment, to settle into the granules of skin on the man, to be breathed in and circulated through the blood, and exhaled to become a filament in his eyes. It is startled by this sudden want, by the intensity of the yearning, and wonders if this is what Dean had felt only moments before. 

"What?"

Castiel blinks, hands gripping tightly to each other in Its lap. 

"Dean?"

"You're doing it again," Dean says, shaking his head knowingly with a resigned sort of amusement. His arms are crossed over his chest, and Castiel doesn't understand if It should be deterred by the stance or why that notion is even relevant. 

"My apologies," Castiel murmurs, and It shifts Its gaze to travel the many threads that make up the sheets surrounding It.

Silence settles, a sort of peaceful tranquility, and Castiel is content with listening to the dull discourse of Its brethren through the air, whispers a soft melody in the back of Its perception, when the bed shifts, and It tilts precariously with the sudden decline. It turns to find Dean sitting next to It, closer than usual to what the Winchester preferred when making contact, and It finds Itself momentarily unresponsive. 

"Cas...you" Dean falters, eyes dropping to the quilt, and Castiel is caught again by the intense, burn that smolders, scorching forth; the want to be within the Winchester's skin. It waits, hesitant, while Dean's thoughts begin to clamour, building in tenor through the air. 

"After this...y'know, if we do end up -when we stop the apoc...y'know, all this crap."

Castiel sees an infinite view of every outcome, and stands, shoulder to shoulder, with Dean in the graveyard, feeling God smiling in the whole of Its existence. 

"Where are you going?"

Castiel blinks, snaps back to this precise moment, this universe, this 'time' and falters on conveyance of thought. Dean is staring at It, much like so many other times, and It finds, for once, that It is discomforted by the Winchester's eyes. 

"What?"

"After we're done, you going to flap your feathery-butt back to Heaven?"

It knows, abruptly, that Its response is critical; It can hear the way Dean's heartbeat is thudding heavily and fast in his chest, the tumble of his thoughts, each word tripping over the other in their disarray. It knows that Dean wants It to say, "Here with you, of course."

But that is only a half-truth.

"I will return to Heaven, were I am supposed to be, " Castiel says, slowly, weighing each word as It touches the edges of Its mouth. It sees the downfall of Dean's demeanor, a shadow that grows and begins to darken his countenance, but It continues before the whole of it can be reached. 

"But if you ever need me, you know...I always come when you call."

 

\- o0o -

Three days pass, and Castiel heals perfectly, back to 'good as new' that Dean declares with a grin and a slap to the angel's back. Castiel tips Its head at the gesture, and Sam shakes his head with a chuckle, breathless. They part way then, much to Dean's disappointment, although he tries in vain to mask it (Castiel knows It is the only one privy, and does not feel the need to disclose the information to Sam).

\- o0o -

They meet again, several times, over several months, and each time becomes something more crucial. 

They are approaching what may/is/has/has not been the end. Castiel knows this, aches in all the other universes where the outcomes have varied, but this one It finds Its reprieve. 

Dean slings an arm around Its shoulders, shaking his head with laughter.

"Honestly, I wonder what that would have been like if you were still in that other vessel."

Castiel nods, knowing full well that no other instance has occurred with that circumstance (being in a strip club and making the unknown mistake of discerning the girl's psychological baggage), but smiles regardless. It has grown used to Jimmy's body, had missed the feel of this particular movement within -It compares the sensation from being in one particular jar to another, and preferring the jar that It has spent the most time in. It is glad to be back in this jar.

"Perhaps some day we can endeavor to find out," Castiel muses, and Dean laughs again, leaning into the angel, and Castiel pulls up Its head to look at the Winchester. They are stopped in front of Dean's car, and as the laughter winds down and Dean is left breathless, Castiel feels the warmth again. Then Dean turns, and with some sinuous motion of practice, spins Castiel so that the angel is lent against the car and Dean is bracing his arms on both sides of It. 

"Cas," Dean says, and his breath hitches on something akin to a laugh still, the last dredges making the words almost a whisper. Castiel stares, thrumming, burning, eyes steady despite the way It quivers inside Its cage, hands shaking. 

"Dean."

"I'm keeping my word, y'know." 

Castiel tilts Its head just slightly, and Dean is smiling, alcohol just a drop in his veins, but enough to slacken fear or inhibition. It knows, even before the Winchester settles even closer, bringing their faces together, what Dean is thinking, what he means. 

It nods, imperceptibly, before Dean leans all the way in and presses his lips to Castiel's own.


	8. Infinite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [in progress]  
> Always and forever

[In progress]

The end comes, and it is similar, in some ways, to the beginning. 

Castiel feels Itself unwind, each particle ripped apart abruptly, rent asunder by Lucifer -while It spirals outward, finite, each molecule obliterating, It realizes with a stark flare, glorious as a Super Nova, God's touch. 

And then It is standing next to Dean, squinting into late afternoon sunlight. It touches the elder brother's mottled face, and while the brother heaves confusion and relief from pain unfathomable to It, Castiel merely smiles. Bobby is teetering to his feet in the background, having already been resurrected and healed by Castiel's hand, but by the time he tries to approach, Castiel vanishes.

Dean is shell shocked, and while he stands, Bobby trying to say something to him, the words fall upon deaf ears. 

They can't both be gone. That's not fair. That's not...

Bobby tugs on Dean's shoulders, says; "Come on, son," and Dean allows himself to be guided into the passenger seat of Baby, mind blank, chest hollow, and a deep ache settling behind his eyes. 

\- o0o -

It fights through droves that are not as endless as before, because this time there is nothing to be protected -the cage itself is a craft that no hellish resident wants to get particularly close to. 

But Castiel approaches it regardless. 

What It is greeted with is a tumult of Micheal and Lucifer, spewing their grievances, but so caught up in their turmoil that Castiel is able to collect Sam, whole and sound, from the confines -Its brothers have abandoned their vessels in this plane, as there is no need for them anyway, to fully expand their wrath upon each other. Their clash is greater than thunder within the spans of a stadium, raucous and unrelenting. Castiel clutches Sam into the safety of Its essence and departs the way It came.

\- o0o -

A year passes, and Dean is helping Bobby at the salvage yard between hunts because it is the closest thing to a home he has ever had and the mindless, tedious, hands on work of rebuilding cars and scavenging parts keeps him from shaking apart into pieces that his hands are too unsteady to pick up. 

He's on his way back from another junk yard, where he's found the right fuel injector for a Camaro he's been working on, when he notices the two figures standing on the porch. He slows the Impala, the roar of the engine dulling to a rumble as his foot edges off the accelerator. His hands are slack on the wheel. The car stalls before Dean even notices he's taken his foot entirely off the gas.

The door begrudges him no sound, for once, no creak of metal or wear, and Dean is standing on wobbling knees with the taste of dry dirt in his mouth as he stares down the path to the house, where there are now three figures, and he can't move for a moment, too caught up with the sudden anticipation and the way his mind shies away from it, afraid of the surety that the view is false, that the hope is unwarranted, that at any moment he'll break. 

But the figures remain, moving slightly, and Dean is stuck until the tallest raises its arm and waves it around wildly. 

And then he's running. 

Feet stomping, Baby forgotten, world forgotten, heart somewhere in the back seat. He's thudding down the road so fast that he can feel the world turning beneath him, dust kicking up in his wake. He's almost there, and they are moving now, the tallest is sprinting off the deck, and Dean is going to have a heart-attack because his chest is so tight and his heart is so erratic but he doesn't care and he thinks, vaguely, that he's probably already dead. 

"DEAN!"

Sam's there, suddenly, abruptly, crashing into him, and Dean clings to his brother for dear life, as if he is a ship in a roaring sea, and he's choking on something in his throat and laughing and Sam is spewing out words like "Oh My GOD, DEAN," and "I missed you" and "Castiel" and "I'm OK" but Dean doesn't care, he's holding his brother and the world can crash and burn for all that it matters. 

When he finally let's go -and he doesn't, not fully, his hand grips so tight to the back of Sam's shirt that he could be ripping fabric -Sam gestures animatedly towards the house. Bobby is grinning with sunlight glinting on cheeks wet with tears, and Castiel...

Castiel stands there in his trenchoat, hands in the pockets, looking at Dean as if from somewhere far away. 

"Cas"

Dean falters -for so long he'd resented the angel. Every night for a year, he'd prayed, he'd called, he yelled, and in the end, after the screaming and the cursing of "YOU SAID YOU WOULD COME WHEN I CALLED" he had begged. But never a word. 

He realizes, with a sock to a gut, why.

"You brought him back?" Dean finally manages, standing at the bottom step and looking up at Cas as if he's a lion with wings and not an angel hidden within a man's suit. Castiel nods, smiling slightly, but then his lips fall and his expression is solemn again, although tinged with what Dean knows is remorse. 

"I tried to be faster," Castiel starts, but Dean cuts him off, nearly jumps the three steps to grip the angel in a hug.

"Dude -holy-fuc-just, thank you, God, Castiel, thank you."

Castiel is silent, stoic in his arms, but Dean can feel the surprise in the way Castiel's mouth hangs open. When he pulls back, he grins widely, taking Castiel's face in his hands. 

"You feather-butted son of a bitch, that's where you went as soon as it happened, isn't it? You didn't even wait a minute to get help or-or you just went right in."

Dean shakes his head, feeling the ash of anger that doesn't fully rekindle. 

"What if you had died down there, huh? What was I supposed to do without _either_ of you?"

"I promised Sam," Castiel replies, face still trapped in Dean's hand. Its eyes remain steady upon Dean's, although It feels bemused and relieved and innumerable in ways that It doesn't register. "It was the only reason he agreed to go ahead with the plan, I told him I would get him out as soon as we had sealed them."

"You two-" Dean stops, sucks air in through his teeth "Are fucking idiots."

He turns to look at Sam, but Sam is gone, and Dean's heart stops for a beat before Castiel interrupts the start of his panic.

"They went inside." Castiel says firmly, calming. Dean nods, looks back to Castiel.

"Idiots."

"Yes, Dean, you said so."

"Idiots."

And then he kisses Castiel, roughly, hungrily, a whole year's worth of pent up yearning and aggression and sorrow between their lips. And Castiel puts Dean back together again, nice and neat, as if there had never been any damage to begin with.

**Author's Note:**

> Skewed time line. Perhaps somewhere between seasons 5 and 6, or 4 and 5. 
> 
> When writing, Castiel as an Angel does not refer to Itself as either gender, as that is a human tendency, precluding merely the role of procration, and, therefor, inadequate in describing a celestial being's self. However, Castiel is inclined to favour masculinity, and, therefor, may sometimes refer to Itself as such. 
> 
> To make it easier to differentiate between Castiel's self and an inanimate object or ambiguous reference, Castiel will either be written as 'It' or 'Itself', always with a capital 'I'.


End file.
